Finally healthy

Julia is all better and Jude's allergies are starting to be controlled. I am so tired of doctors and hospitals. I have not even seen the hospital bills yet and I know it will not be pretty.

Now, if we can just stay this way all winter!!

Two more ER visits!

Only this time it was Julia who was in the ER! Let me just say that my kids have the weirdest medical issues and always seem to confuse doctors, especially Julia.

Last Monday, Julia started complaining that her leg hurt at about 5pm. She also started to refuse to walk on it. I did not think too much of it, she is always bouncing and jumping around, I just figured she bumped it. After an hour or two she was starting to whine and cry about it hurting, especially when her hip was moved. By this time we figured out her pain was coming from her hip area. We thought that she must have pulled a muscle. After a couple more hours she is screaming in pain and refuses to move her leg at all. At this point, I don't think it is a pulled muscle and start to worry that something serious is wrong. We pack Julia up and take her to the ER. I thought about taking her to Children's right away, but it is 30-45 minutes away, and the local hospital is only 5 minutes away.

The local hospital is busy. We sit in the waiting room for over an hour waiting to even get an exam room. All the while, Julia is whining with occasional bouts of screaming and sleeping.

Once we finally see a doctor, he is convinced she has a condition that normally happens to pre-teens in where the ball of the femur breaks off at the growth plate. He orders x-rays to confirm this. Of course Julia screamed through the x-rays because we had to move her leg around. I am pretty sure people in the next county heard her! Oddly enough the x-rays show no evidence of a break at the growth plate. The dr. decides to send the x-rays off for a second opinion. During this time, they do give Julia some Motrin for the pain. It does not help, but she finally cries herself to sleep. The second opinion of the x-rays also come back clear. So now the dr. is stumped and he decides to call Children's Hospital for help. The doctors at Children's tell him the possibilities of what it could be and the test that need to be run. The local doc explains this to us, but says that don't have the equipment to run these tests on a child, so it is probably best just to take her to Children's, especially since they would have to treat her there anyway.

So after 5 hours at the local ER, we pack Julia up and I drive her to the Children's ER. Luckily, they are not too busy and were expecting her. We quickly see a doctor who explains what they think it is. They need bloodwork and another set of x-rays. They decide that they need to get Julia's pain under control before they even attempted x-rays again. They start an IV to get blood and to give Julia some Morphine and Motrin. They Morphine makes her a little spacey and slow, but it dulls the pain.

The bloodwork shows no infection and the x-rays are clear so they want an ultrasound of her hip to see if she has a pocket of fluid surrounding it. Julia does well for the ultrasound and even I can see that there is definitely a big pocket of fluid around her hip joint.

The Orthopedist was working on another case, so we had to wait awhile before he could talk to us. The good news was that nothing was broken and there is no infection. It was something called Transit Synovitis. Doctors don't know what causes it, but it happens in kids Julia's age, usually about a week after an Upper Respiratory Infection (a cold), and it will go away on it's own within a couple of days. They bad news it that it is very painful until then. He gave us some prescriptions for pain meds and sent us home.

Of all the possibilities that could have been wrong, I think we lucked out. They others would have involved a hospital stay and surgery.

By Wednesday morning she was already up and running around on it. Unfortunately by Wednesday evening she was complaining that her OTHER hip now hurt and by that night she was screaming in pain again. It had the same symptoms as the other hip, so we know what it was. I just felt awful because there was nothing I could do to take the pain away. The pain meds were not helping.

Everything I was told and everything I read only talked about ONE hip/joint being affected. I was not prepared for her other hip to get it to. I called the ortho dr. on Thursday morning to ask about it. He was surprised that her other hip was now affected. He did say it was very unusual, but not completely unheard of. Just keep an eye on her and bring her in if she starts running a temperature or any other joint becomes affected.

Luckily, by Friday she was better other than mild pain. She limped slightly most of the weekend and complained of just mild pain. No other joints became affected.

Geesh! My kids come up with the strangest aliments!

Julia' Hat

Got Julia's hat finished about a week ago. I was going to make it all purple, but Julia said I needed to add pink to the bottom. I think it needs a crocheted flower at the gather, so I will do that soon.

Julia likes to make silly faces for the camera.....

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning!!!!

I have been cleaning almost non-stop for days now! The entire house smells like bleach and my washing machine has not stopped running in four days.

Basically I am doing Spring cleaning in the fall. In an effort to get Jude's allergies under control everything in the house is is getting washed, scrubbed, dusted, bleached, etc.. I even had Jerry bring over his Dyson vacuum. Even after just vacuuming with my vacuum, the Dyson still swept up THREE canisters full for dust/dirt!! I really think a Dyson vacuum needs to move up the list from a "someday luxury" to a "necessity", especially with Jude's allergies.

After today the entire upstairs will have been scrubbed completely! That includes windows washed, curtains washed, everything dusted-including baseboards, furniture moved and swept under, beds completely stripped and washed, etc. The curtains in Jude's room will not go back up.

I still need to rent a carpet shampooer and shampoo all the carpets. We will also be removing the carpet in Jude's room and replacing it with hardwood flooring.